Atlanta police on Tuesday continued to search for two robbers captured on video dropping into a check cashing store from the ceiling and grabbing stacks of cash from a safe.
Police believe the pair, working with the help of a suspected lookout, cut into the roof of the one-story store with power tools before the drop-in captured on security video took place, according to an incident report about the Sept. 3 crime.
On Monday, the Atlanta Police Department, working with the nonprofit Crime Stoppers Greater Atlanta, distributed images of the two robbers to seek the public’s help identifying them, Officer A. Fix said by email. The images appear to be taken from the security video.
The department also released some of that morning’s video, captured from inside the store as its ceiling was breached and including the robbers’ exit. The strip mall-based location in southwest Atlanta is fortified with bank teller-style security barriers intended to thwart robberies.
According to the security video and the police report, the first of two people who ended up inside the store dropped in about 8:17 a.m., not long after it opened. Manager Teyoka Glenn was inside and appeared to be startled, according to the report and the video.
There was construction in the building, which prompted her to believe that noise the robbers made breaching the roof was normal, according to the report. When the person dropped down, Glenn told officers, she thought he may have been an injured worker, the report says.
But that first person grabbed her neck, guided her to the ground and yelled at her to stay down, according to the report. The second person dropped in, and a third, the alleged lookout, told the first via phone that a customer was entering the store, the report says.
They told Glenn to get the person to leave, which she did, according to the report. The two then had her guide them to a large safe, where video captures them peering inside.
The manager said they used a pink and black duffel bag to transport cash they grabbed from the safe, according to the report.
Glenn said the two took her to a bathroom, bound her with duct tape and searched for more cash, according to the report. It’s not clear whether they found more; the total haul was estimated at $150,000, the report says.
The two retrieved Glenn to ask for directions on getting out, and she told them about a backdoor, it says. They fled out the rear portal, and video captured a woman walking by just after the door was opened.
Police said the possible third person is seen on separate security video, captured by a device in the city’s Connect Atlanta network of police and volunteer cameras, carrying a cooler as he walked down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
The manager was unharmed, police said.
In incident at 3:39 a.m. the same day, security video captured a man in a mask and a hoodie burglarizing a business after he breached it through the wall of a bathroom he was able to access, according to an Atlanta police statement.
The breach caused a water pipe to rupture, and an alarm sounded, police said. The burglary netted clothing and purses, they said.
Investigators were processing fingerprints found at the scene, according to the police statement.
Asked whether the two incidents could be related, Fix, the police spokesperson, said by email, “Because both of those investigations remain active and ongoing, we have no further information that is available.”
